Cuyahoga County task force aims to help people who hoard (poll)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Gerald VanBolt paid for his hoarding with his life.

The 68-year-old Brooklyn man, who was divorced and living alone, had piled so much stuff in his Winter Lane home that firefighters responding to an emergency call just before midnight on Oct. 31 were unable to get inside through either the front or back doors.

Emergency crews arrived at VanBolt's home within 4 minutes of receiving a call from a neighbor, but they were forced to wait the fire out, breaking windows to provide ventilation and spraying water in through bedroom windows, hoping to put out the flames and protect the occupant.

A few minutes later, they entered and found VanBolt dead in the hallway, the victim of soot inhalation and an avalanche of debris, which in some places reached the ceiling, according to an incident report. As one firefighter reported, "There were no paths through the clutter for travel and we had to climb over the debris."

Brooklyn Fire Chief Joseph Zemek, who directed efforts to save VanBolt, said hoarding in homes is "common" and that the problem cuts across gender, race and income boundaries.

In Zemek's business, the result can be deadly: The debris acts as fuel to accelerate fires and makes it hard to reach people.

"No firefighter wants to have somebody die in a house fire," Zemek said. "It's sad. These people fall through the cracks.

"I guess the message here is that these people need help."

Brooklyn is one of a rapidly growing number of communities that have joined forces with a relatively new task force on hoarding, The Hoarding Connection of Cuyahoga County, a partnership of emergency personnel, social service agencies and health officials. The group wants to call attention to hoarding as a mental illness, while quantifying its reach into our communities and trying to get funding to get people help.

In October, a hoarding conference in Westlake drew more than 300 people.

What is hoarding?

Most people have clutter in their homes, but true hoarding is a mental illness.

Hoarders are people who have collected so much debris that at least three rooms in their home can no longer be used for their intended purposes.

Everyone collects things that are important to them, but hoarders collect things in which friends and family see no value. Some people hoard objects, some animals, some both.

Hoarders usually won't acknowledge a problem either because they don't see it as a problem or they're embarrassed.

Hoarders need the help of a therapist, professional organizer or both.

Hoarding is a safety and health hazard. The debris can act as a fuel for fires and make it difficult for police officers, firefighters and EMS crews to respond in emergencies. In the most severe cases, waste clogs kitchens and bathrooms, often with trash piled high, as the home is overrun by rodents, bacteria and other pathogens.

Harper pointed out that training for first responders and social workers is vital because hoarders often resist help from outsiders. "It's a fear among hoarders that they will be removed from their home," added Harper, "or that they'll lose their home or will be institutionalized."

Nationally, experts say that between 2 and 5 percent of the population suffer from hoarding so severe it's considered a mental illness, roughly meaning that they have amassed so much stuff that at least three rooms in their homes are no longer usable for their intended purposes.

That would put the number of hoarders in Northeast Ohio at 57,000 to 144,000 people. But some who see the problem regularly think the number could be higher.

"We're at about a 12 percent rate," said Keith Brown at the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging. Brown is the agency's assistant director of mental health services and the co-chair of the Hoarding Connection task force. He said Benjamin Rose, which serves people 55 and older, currently has about 45 active hoarding cases.

Brown added that clutter really doesn't rise to the level of hoarding until it gets in the way of your life. "I have a 7-month-old daughter, so I'm a Level 2 [hoarder]: My basement has all this junk and boxes down there."

"When it becomes disruptive in your life - when you no longer have functioning toilets, or you can't get to the water heater, you start to have the goat paths -- then you've got a clinical issue," Brown said. "Other than that, you're just messy."

You select one of nine images, each progressively worse, that most accurately reflects the clutter in your room. If you have three rooms that rate a level four or higher, you're probably a hoarder, Frost said.

"I think the most important thing to recognize is that this is not a problem of laziness or messiness," said Frost, co-author of the New York Times best-seller Stuff: Compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things. "It's a real disorder, an inability to control this behavior."

According to Frost, hoarding has three distinct aspects: an excessive level of acquiring possessions, an inability to let go of things, and an inability to keep things organized.

"The last piece is just as important as the first," Frost said. "Most of us probably have more things than we need. But we're able to keep them organized, so they don't get in our way."

In Northeast Ohio, hoarding problems stretch across the area's geography, with cases being reported in nearly every community -- from Cleveland to Solon, Orange to Middleburg Heights, Parma to Rocky River, where Fire Marshal Robert Crowe characterized it as an extremely serious issue for his department.

"This has been happening for years," Crowe added. "It's just that nobody put a label on it, gave it a title."

Local officials credit the A&E reality television program "Hoarders" and other shows with drawing attention to the issue, but they say that television's portrayal of the problem, particularly how quickly it can be dealt with, gives people unrealistic expectations.

Problems are not solved in a single hour. Ultimately, there is no cure for hoarding. The goal is to reduce the clutter to a manageable level, so it's not interrupting your life or damaging relationships with family or friends.

It's a long process.

"We have clients we go to once a month for years," said professional organizer Muffy Kaesberg, co-owner of the Cleveland Heights-based Organizing 4U, which handles about 20 hoarding cases a year. "They just can't part with their things."

"It's emotionally wrenching," added Kaesberg, chair of the Benjamin Rose board of directors. "Doing it gradually over time is easier for them."